This morning Trish took the kids to the Anza Borrego State Park visitor center where they received their Junior Ranger badges:

Meanwhile, I was riding up Montezuma Grade, a 3,900 foot climb over 10 miles.  At the summit, at 4,500 feet, it looks a lot less like a desert:

Looking back towards Borrego Springs, I could see all the way to the mountains on the far side of Salton Sea:

The descent:

About halfway down, I stopped at the overlook which looks out over Borrego Springs:

The kids photographed a Lego desert scene:

In the afternoon, we hitched up and drove down to Salton City, which has a fascinating history.  Laid out to accommodate tens of thousands of residents, the town only has a few thousand residents, leaving a vast grid of paved and signed neighborhood roads with no houses on them.

A city campground which has been abandoned now provides free camping.  We set up as the sun began to set:

We’ve come here for a PPG fly-in that is scheduled to start on Thursday, so we were quite surprised to see that a number of pilots are already here.  Most are staying at the full-service RV park next door, which has it’s own ultralight runway:

Not a bad place to spend a few days:

See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.